The past week has certainly not been a good one for Australia’s chances to host Football’s crown jewel. Let’s do a quick rundown of some of the recent developments and what they might mean for the FFA’s chances.
1) FIFA Chief Sepp Blatter announced that there was a “movement” to host the World Cup in Europe in 2018. Essentially, this was Blatter announcing what everybody all along had already assumed – that the moneyed interests in FIFA and UEFA would not tolerate three consecutive World Cup finals away from European soil – but the FIFA President managed to infuriate bidding members and fans on several continents, something he has proved splendidly adept at during his tenure. He has since backed away from these comments, and has emphasized that everyone is still allowed to bid, but if you still think Australia has a shot at 2018, I invite you to visit the nearest mental hospital.
2) With this bomb fully detonated, journalists, bloggers and anyone else with half a brain began wondering the obvious – how in the world did this happen?
http://www.theaustralian.com.
As Ray Gatt points out here, the lack of foresight on the part of Australia’s bid committee calls into question just how effective their hiring of Peter Hargitay – the supposed FIFA insider with an impressive list of forays into criminal activity. He is, according to some reports, being paid $4 million out of the $45 million taxpayer-funded budget for the World Cup bid. For that price, would it be too much to ask for him to do his job?
3) The resignation of Bonita Mersiades was certainly a big blow as well. Mersiades was hand-picked to run corporate and public affairs for Australia’s bid, and has had close personal relationships with nearly everyone of significance in the FFA. In other words, she was the real deal.
So what happened? Why the mysterious departure? Naturally FFA wouldn’t say anything, only recycling the usual PR-firm jargon that the bid remains on track, they are confident with their staff, Australia will host a great finals, etc. But Jesse Fink from The World Game, who knew Mersiades personally, seems to call FFA’s official line into question:
http://theworldgame.sbs.com.
“But I got the impression she was unhappy about the situation. If you know Bonnie, and I do, you know she lives and breathes football. This was her dream gig.
Socceroos legend and FFA board member Jack Reilly was flabbergasted by her departure, telling me that from what he had seen, she enjoyed the “full confidence” of the “the chairman and chief executive” and had previously been “supported to the hilt”.
It beggars belief that Ben Buckley now insists her leaving the organisation will have no effect on Australia's World Cup bid, because Mersiades herself drafted a lot of the strategy documents used for the campaign, and even wrote the script Nicole Kidman read out in the bid’s promotional film.”
There is certainly quite a bit of time left for the FFA to get the bid back on track, but the last few weeks have been nothing short of embarrassing for Australian football fans. Davidde Coran from The Roar sums up the general mood fairly nicely:
“Less then two months ago, Australia was as real of a World Cup hosting candidate as any of the others. But is that still the case? The free ride is over, the Australian bid has begun to flail, and it’s time to starting asking questions.”
http://www.theroar.com.au/2010/01/28/time-to-get- serious-about-our-floundering- world-cup-bid/
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